Stress and Your Nervous System

Are you aware of how stress affects your nervous system and what that means for your health and life experiences? First, we need to understand that the nervous system is the communications system of the mind and body. It carries all the messages from the mind to all the different parts of the body and returns responses.

Next, what is stress? Dr. Hans Selye, who devoted his life to the study of stress, describes it as any demand made on the body or the mind/body system. Therefore, everything we experience in any way makes a demand on the nervous system, which is fine until we make more demands on the system than it can handle. That is when it gets our attention and that is what we usually think of as stress.

We live in a stressful world under the best of circumstances, but when we have additional stress in our lives, over time, it damages the nervous system’s ability to keep all the lines of communication working properly. The first thing that usually suffers is our perception. We do not see and understand things clearly. That leads to mistakes and poor choices. Our energy decreases and we lose our enthusiasm. We have a hard time seeing possibilities.

We begin to feel somewhat overwhelmed and there is a feeling of annoyance or anxiety that just doesn’t seem to go away. We usually try to do something to make us feel better, but since our perception is not clear the choices we make are usually ineffective. We may choose to smoke cigarettes or marijuana, drink too much, try drugs, sometimes prescription drugs, sometimes others or even over eat. We are just trying to do something to make us feel better or more comfortable, even though most of the time we are not clearly aware of what we are doing. These choices, of course, just create more stress. It sometimes seems that they help for a little while, so we try more of whatever we have chosen, and as soon as the newness wares off we still have the same uncomfortable feeling.

Soon the nervous system is so damages it can no longer keep up the communication necessary for maintaining even minimal health, and illness occurs in some part of the body. This causes one to go to see a doctor. The doctor treats the patient with either surgery or drugs, which may take care of the apparent problem for awhile, but it doesn’t do anything to release the stress or repair the nervous system. Therefore, the downward cycle continues because the nervous system has to be healthy to keep the mind/body system healthy.

If nothing is done to release the stress and strengthen the nervous system, malfunction will occur again, and in time one experiences an early death.

This stress, not only damages our health, but it makes us less and less capable of accomplishing the things that are important to us. As we become overstressed it shows up in our relationships, and all the things that are important to us in living a fulfilling life eludes us.

In the past we have not understood how stress affects our health and experiences. But there is now good news. Many years ago I discovered a process for releasing stress and strengthening the nervous system. It is simple and easy to do, but it does require a commitment over time. The stress overwhelms us over time and it also takes some time to strengthen the nervous system to where it is capable of healing the entire mind/body system which it can and will do as the stress is released and the nervous system gets stronger.

But, the really exciting news is about what happens after the nervous system heals the mind and body. If we keep working with this process over time the nervous system continues to become stronger and stronger and actually moves us into a much more advanced level of functioning than anything we have ever experienced in the past. It develops the potential we all have deep within ourselves, the potential that lies dormant until our nervous systems become capable of activating what we are now calling right brain abilities.

Not only does the discomfort go away, it is replaced with a feeling of well being, clarity and peace of mind. Our energy increases and we begin to feel more confident. Our minds become very clear and we begin to intuitively know things. This is a new experience, because intuitively we can see the big picture and how all the parts fit together. We can see and understand the interconnectedness of everything.

Once we develop our intuitive abilities we can clearly understand the relationship between stress and our health and experiences. This is a big step for the intellect to understand, but intuitively we can know many things that are impossible for the intellect (left brain functioning).

Intuition is a human potential that is developed through the strengthening of the nervous system. Abraham Maslow calls this self-actualization.

Are experiencing the down cycle of an overstressed nervous system? If so, it is time to discover how to heal your entire mind/body system and live a much more fulfilling life.

I have also created a CD, DVD and Companion Workbook to help you get started. In addition we now have our Personal Growth and Development Core Course on DVDs so you can experience this course in the comfort of your own home. You can get a free introductory session to this course by simply clicking in the box on the side of this page requesting it.

Once you start experiencing this growth process, we also provide courses that you can attend to accelerate this natural evolutionary process.